Disappointing First 2500miles in my new formentor

[Vitara7]

So I’ve had my formentor phev for about a month now, and done around 2500 miles in it, and I wanted to post me experiences and issues I have with the car to see if others are having the same issues.

the biggest issue I had was less than 100 miles done, (3rd day of owning it) the electric drive no longer works, comes up with an electric drive not working message, so the car can’t be charged, it’s going to be another four weeks before the garage can take it in to even look at it.

Ive also found the app and user I’d both can’t be set up, tried numerous times and just gave up now.

just running the car in petrol mode, I’m getting around 39mpg with everything set to eco and driving like a granny.
This is much lower than what I seen advertised on cupras website, nearly half!

I’m also finding the car auto brakes as it thinks I’m going above the speed limit in certain areas so I’m not above to coast, is there a way to turn the ability off of the car to auto brake to bring you down to the speed limit, or what it thinks is the speed limit as it’s picking up wrong speeds?

Lane assist is a pain, randomly driving along, especially is low sun, and the car will swerve suddenly thinking you’ve went over a white line, when in reality it’s picked up, or I think it’s picking up, shiny tar lines from road repairs. I know I can turn off lane assist, but I can’t find a permanent way off doing so.

The car looks really good, and there are some nice things about it, but I find I’m disappointed by the seven week repair time, a terrible mpg, well below advertised, and not being able to turn off the annoying auto brake would make me advise people to avoid one of these for now.

 

[Tell]

So I’ve had my formentor phev for about a month now, and done around 2500 miles in it, and I wanted to post me experiences and issues I have with the car to see if others are having the same issues.

the biggest issue I had was less than 100 miles done, (3rd day of owning it) the electric drive no longer works, comes up with an electric drive not working message, so the car can’t be charged, it’s going to be another four weeks before the garage can take it in to even look at it.

Ive also found the app and user I’d both can’t be set up, tried numerous times and just gave up now.

just running the car in petrol mode, I’m getting around 39mpg with everything set to eco and driving like a granny.
This is much lower than what I seen advertised on cupras website, nearly half!

I’m also finding the car auto brakes as it thinks I’m going above the speed limit in certain areas so I’m not above to coast, is there a way to turn the ability off of the car to auto brake to bring you down to the speed limit, or what it thinks is the speed limit as it’s picking up wrong speeds?

Lane assist is a pain, randomly driving along, especially is low sun, and the car will swerve suddenly thinking you’ve went over a white line, when in reality it’s picked up, or I think it’s picking up, shiny tar lines from road repairs. I know I can turn off lane assist, but I can’t find a permanent way off doing so.

The car looks really good, and there are some nice things about it, but I find I’m disappointed by the seven week repair time, a terrible mpg, well below advertised, and not being able to turn off the annoying auto brake would make me advise people to avoid one of these for now.

I think you might need the Obdeleven thread so you can turn off some of the attributes

OBDEleven Formentor - See below for working ones

Do we know if the brilliant OBDeleven works on the formentor ? i have on and have used it on my own car and friends and family . i used it to code all sorts of things from disabling start stop to changing lights and clearing fault codes.

www.seatcupra.net

On my Ateca I don't use lane assist but the 2020- cars default this to "on" at ignition each time. You can toggle this to remember the last setting using Obdeleven so one less thing to turn off if you never use it at ignition (mine I keep toggled off). The undertaking issue can be turned off.

Afraid I don't use ACC either but speed sign reads I find accurate. Suspect you might be able to change how it reads road speed from just the car's menu system without coding it. Early issue that people abroad moaned about when ACC first came in was that speeds digitised on roads were inaccurate so the vehicle slowed down to an incorrect speed.

Have a look at the Obdeleven thread to see whether that is helpful for some of the annoying aspects. Others might be in the menu.

 

[Peyton]

I’m also finding the car auto brakes as it thinks I’m going above the speed limit in certain areas so I’m not above to coast, is there a way to turn the ability off of the car to auto brake to bring you down to the speed limit, or what it thinks is the speed limit as it’s picking up wrong speeds?

You should probably read the manual yourself but I know that there is a setting for ACC that makes it ignore speed signs/road shape. If this settings is turned on, the car will slow down to keep to the speed limit and it will slow down if it thinks you are approaching a big bend in the road. Both of these things annoyed me so I turned them off.

If you are in the UK, your problem may be that car sometimes falls back to thinking it is a continental car and then it disallows "undertaking".

 

[Tell]

If you are in the UK, your problem may be that car sometimes falls back to thinking it is a continental car and then it disallows "undertaking".

My understanding is that it prevents undertaking period whether in LHD or RHD hence why you can alter that via coding methods (The link) (That's what owners of these cars say in the UK) but 2020- cars get confused also about left and right as well so will sometimes do it on valid overtaking (there is a bug in some of the software on some of the cars). Both issues can be fixed by turning off the undertaking prevention via coding fixes the bug and turns off the undertaking prevention.

Speed regulation in warning of speeding via traffic sign recognition (TSR) I find is brilliant but its a personal choice whether you want to disregard the technology that warns you when you are speeding. If you drive via ACC and don't like this behaviour you can change how it reads the speed from the camera TSR and digital maps. TSR will always correct incorrect map speeds if it sees a sign (or sometimes needs to see two one after the other) and also take into account variable speed signage. Suspect it doesnt work on the new council 20mph limits painted on roads, they have to be on message posts with rings on them etc. Image recognition. Once those get on digital maps protection from those.

Hybrids have the other clever stuff to regenerate the battery by getting the driver not to use the brakes putting the energy into the battery, influenced by the digital maps in the car. Clever stuff. You probably get a moderated automated driving style than those that use ACC locked onto the car in front, lane assist and braking at the last minute.

 

[martin j.]

Fuel consumption is rarely in line with manufacturers claimed figures, but yours should improve as you get more miles on the car. I’ve found we get better consumption with our Leon driving in ‘Sport’ mode, seems the better throttle response is better than the ‘eco’ in getting to speed quicker and more efficiently.

 

[KXL]

39 mpg on a brand new 1.4ACT running E10 plus needing to carry extra 200kg or so of batteries and Electric drive train isn't too bad actually. Once the electric drive starts working in tandem, you may (no you won't get those stated figures of over 100mpg) easily achieve 50-80mpg.

 

[AndyCupra93]

The whole electric drive system isn’t working? You should call SEAT assist and get it recovered straight away…

 

[Fishbowlhead]

The whole electric drive system isn’t working? You should call SEAT assist and get it recovered straight away…

Absolutely, just dump it straight back at the dealership and either get a refund or demand it be fixed right away.

 

[NickS68]

Ive also done 2500 miles in a Formentor V2 1.5tsi, and they've been disappointing too, but my sole bugbear is the infotainment screen. It is a 50/50 lottery whether it works or not. Some days its fine, some days it partially works so i can eg change the aircon but not the radio, or the heated seats come on and cant be turned off. Then I was out in it yesterday and needed to use the satnav, screen was absolutely dead for the entire 2.5 hours i was out, after several system reboots i had to use google maps on my phone. So frustrating! is it too much to expect a new car to work properly?. i called my local dealer whilst out in it and explained to him, but just got the "get it booked in" which was fair enough, but its the time spent doing all that that makes it such a pain. Mines on a lease, im actually considering contacting VWFS to see if i can get out of the contract, but i expect they will say i need to prove a fault, and from what im reading, the dealers cant actually find the fault as its an intermittent one. I feel totally let down.

 

[Vitara7]

I had went through the manual a few times, I like a good read with a new toy, and turned the speed detection off, and even acc off, but was still doing it.

it’s the ability to charge up and capture regeneratively that’s faulty, it comes up saying electric drive fault. It’s seat themselves that’s saying they can’t take it in until end October, 7 weeks after fault.

I did also have the issue that someone mentioned about it thinks your undertaking and slows rather suddenly, even though your over taking something. Each time it’s happened, it’s been when the sun is low and put it down to that, never thought it could be because it thinks is on the other side of the road, thanks for pointing that one out.

to be honest, it’s my first seat group car, I got it due to the styling and not many being around with it being such a new model, and I’m regretting it, I probably should have waited until it had been out a couple of years.

 

[deano_72]

Getting abit worried about collecting ours on Friday now! Is it too late to pull out

 

[Tell]

Seats are generally good it's the ones on the VAG MQB Evo platform which includes the Leon 4 which have problematic digital systems.

Volkswagen Group MQB platform - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Obviously can be fixed one way or another.

 

[Dave5118]

I have a similar scenario to you with my Cupra Leon PHEV, my electric drive works, but the 12v battery drains overnight when the car is plugged in to the charger.
I have resorted to driving in 'hybrid' mode, but get horrendous mpg figures, I have driven several hybrid vehicles including an Ioniq PHEV, and can easily achieve 55+ mpg on my 10 mile commute. But with the leon the best I can achieve is 41mpg, which is terrible for a 'hybrid' car.
I have seen a setting in the menus to be able to alter the 'regeneration', it was set at 'auto', it is this I think is your gripe, as it's automatically brakes the car when it thinks it's appropriate. I would change it on mine if I could find out where it is again LOL

When/if they fix my issue, I'll be driving it in EV mode mostly, so won't be a worry then hopefully.

 

[Marck]

I must admit, I did just a quick look at all this posts, but needs to be realistic, I'm happy with my Formentor, but is not easy to understand how it works, is your dealer-car trained you ? I guess NOT
I picked my new car but I had to rush, dealer-car pushed me to go back for a traning and he was right! I had to come back to them, 90% of the things cannot be understandable by manual-book, nothing at all

I can drive, ECO, Hybrid & Petrol, security system saved me several times and YES it breaks when you are over the signal-limits, if you do not like it, just disable it, if you do not know how to disable it, come back to SEAT and ask for a full-training

app and browser access, is fantastic I can set a battery-charge from 23:30 to 6:00 exactly when I pay less, I did 3000KM with only one FULL petrol, this is what I wanted, and hey, if I want a sport car, I set S drive S on DGS and there you go

again, I'm really happy, not blaming you, maybe just unfortunate but on your feet I would come back to SEAT asking for help

 

[Vitara7]

I wasn’t shown anything from them in depth at all and never offered anything in the way of any training. Everything I’ve found out, it’s via trial and error and reading online.

One more thing I’ve discovered that’s very concerning, when driving on motorways with ACC turned on, when overtaking, three times now it intermittently slams on the breaks while I’m in the fast lane, with a car nearly going into the rear end of me because off it.
It appears the car hops between Uk and EU, as it looks like it thinks I’m undertaking, and it turns from 70 to 110 on the speed limit indicator.
the sharp breaking out of nowhere when in the fast lane of a motorway, I’d say is a safety issue.

 

[Tell]

I wasn’t shown anything from them in depth at all and never offered anything in the way of any training. Everything I’ve found out, it’s via trial and error and reading online.

One more thing I’ve discovered that’s very concerning, when driving on motorways with ACC turned on, when overtaking, three times now it intermittently slams on the breaks while I’m in the fast lane, with a car nearly going into the rear end of me because off it.
It appears the car hops between Uk and EU, as it looks like it thinks I’m undertaking, and it turns from 70 to 110 on the speed limit indicator.
the sharp breaking out of nowhere when in the fast lane of a motorway, I’d say is a safety issue.

That's the one you can neutralise with Obdeleven since it won't get confused about left or right if you turn off the information feed from the lane assist camera to ACC (In theory)

OBDEleven Formentor - See below for working ones

Do we know if the brilliant OBDeleven works on the formentor ? i have on and have used it on my own car and friends and family . i used it to code all sorts of things from disabling start stop to changing lights and clearing fault codes.

www.seatcupra.net

I guess it's some confused information that gets sent. You should just get good old fashioned ACC without the adjuct information from the high def camera. It's a common fault reported on boards. I guess Agnes doesn't get this affect now. Her subsequent post on that thread confirms at the time it fixed the left and right overtaking / undertaking issue with ACC.

 

[Marck]

I wasn’t shown anything from them in depth at all and never offered anything in the way of any training. Everything I’ve found out, it’s via trial and error and reading online.

One more thing I’ve discovered that’s very concerning, when driving on motorways with ACC turned on, when overtaking, three times now it intermittently slams on the breaks while I’m in the fast lane, with a car nearly going into the rear end of me because off it.
It appears the car hops between Uk and EU, as it looks like it thinks I’m undertaking, and it turns from 70 to 110 on the speed limit indicator.
the sharp breaking out of nowhere when in the fast lane of a motorway, I’d say is a safety issue.

my FORMENTOR is a Priority paid cash all in one, doesn't mean anything just 50 bucks more but... I had a straight link to CUPRA in Barcelona, I also received an official survey to compile, in order to collect feedbacks on how dealer played this sell, said that I then suggest you to jump the gun and contact CUPRA ASAP! Tell em that you're not happy not only by the car but also by your car dealer, I believe you have all rights and deserve what CUPRA is telling everyone on commercials, quality & support, do not wait and make this move!

 

[deano_72]

Collected car on friday and so far (touch wood) everything just works perfectly. Set up two users, android auto works seamlessly too. The 245 hybrid is a great choice in my opinion for a great all rounder, the mpg is fantastic.

After driving the cupra all weekend i then got into my mini JCW yesterday and it was like driving with concrete wheels the difference in comfort is miles!

 

[Marck]

Collected car on friday and so far (touch wood) everything just works perfectly. Set up two users, android auto works seamlessly too. The 245 hybrid is a great choice in my opinion for a great all rounder, the mpg is fantastic.

After driving the cupra all weekend i then got into my mini JCW yesterday and it was like driving with concrete wheels the difference in comfort is miles!

to me happened on CUPRA too, I have discovered that my wheels were set as 3.1 BAR, once have been coreectly set to 2.6 BAR my driving is soft as it should be

I hope is not the same with you, due you have the issue with your mini

 

[Vitara7]

Cars been in dealer now for a week, it’s throwing up numerous fault codes according to them, and they are waiting on an air con compressor arriving.
Never had any issue with the air con, but I’m expecting once they clear this fault code, I’ll be waiting for parts for the next fault code until they eventually find what’s causing it not to charge and the acc to switching to driving on the other side of the road and breaking harshly when overtaking.